Turkey’s Oscar entry “Miracle in Cell No. 7” made waves within the nation when it first debuted, simply because the South Korean movie of the identical identify, from which it was tailored, did in 2013. Turns out, the Korean filmmakers embraced the variation with open arms.
“When I first watched the South Korean version, I also thought about my childhood, my father and my family,” producer Saner Ayar mentioned throughout TheWrap’s International Screening Series. “And in fact, my outstanding issues with my father and everyone actually questioned their parenting skills. They thought about how they could be a better parent. There was sort of this enlightenment that everyone felt. So when we were actually making this movie, what we wanted was that when actually people watched it in the theater, they would not want to go to a dinner with their spouses, but instead they would want to run back to their houses and hug their children.”
He added: “That was really the feeling we wanted to evoke in people. And when we saw all the tweets, all the comments on social media, I think we succeeded in doing so. I like how, on social media, you can see people who compare the versions. Basically, everybody who liked the South Korean film also likes the Turkish film and, and vice versa.”
Ayar mentioned that they contacted the filmmakers of the South Korean movie to ask them to Turkey to look at the Turkish model of the movie: “They came here and we watched it together. They loved it and during the premiere, we were actually hugging each other with the producer and crying together. That was amazing.”
“Miracle in Cell No. 7” was the most-watched movie in Turkish theaters in 2019 with greater than 5.three million admissions — after that, it topped the charts on Netflix. Likewise, the South Korean model was the eighth movie in Korean cinema historical past to interrupt 10 million ticket gross sales, even with no huge stars and a modest price range. It additionally received a number of awards.
Turkey’s “Miracle in Cell No. 7” stars a mentally challenged man, Memo (performed by Aras Bulut Iynemli), who lives together with his younger daughter and his grandmother on a hillside. His world is endlessly modified when he’s falsely accused of murdering a woman.
The movie takes place throughout a really particular timeframe to bind to a historic time within the nation, director Mehmet Ada Oztekin instructed TheWrap.
“We had picked the dates specifically, as you said,” he instructed TheWrap. “On July 14, 2004 in Turkey, the death penalty was abolished and also taking into account Ova’s age, and the second date that we have also specifically picked was April 1983 and the military government ended the same year in November in 1983.”
Iynemli confronted some challenges getting ready for his position, as a result of he needed to play a personality who was bodily 30 years outdated, however mentally had the notion of a 7-year-old.
“Of course, I was very curious about it and for this reason, I worked with many experts in this area,” he mentioned. “I worked with many acting coaches and I definitely worked very closely with my director in order to reflect this to the audience … I wanted to understand how it is to be in the perception or intellectual level of a 7-year-old child. And when I’m getting prepared for a role, I certainly always try to understand the rhythm of the character, but this time, this character did not have an ordinary rhythm. As you know, children have a different rhythm than us: their enthusiasm, their curiosity. They live emotions always at the edge. So when Memo cries, he made everyone cry. When Memo laughed, he made everyone laugh. So physically, everything was very explicit about him.”
Watch the total interview above.
